to being a tool that integrates several other tools, and
runs in multiple versions of several operating systems.
Eclipse and the projects created around it must be
compatible and able to adapt to heterogeneous infras-
tructure (hardware, operating systems, system ver-
sions, etc). In addition, Performance Efficiency (PE)
presented similar results in the 3 phases of the study.
In Mozilla Firefox, the attributes with most is-
sues raised were Compatibility and Performance Ef-
ficiency. However, while Compatibility had a signif-
icant number of issues in phase 2, Performance Ef-
ficiency presented more homogeneous results in the
three phases. This may be justified by the fact that
Firefox is a Web Browser and must be compatible
with different technologies used in portals and be able
to be installed on various operating systems (Compat-
ibility). All this must take place as transparently to the
user as possible, without problems of slowness or in-
operability arising. The performance of the program
is fundamental, because the competition in the mar-
ket is fierce as regards performance (Performance Ef-
ficiency).
For Libre Office, Functionality was the attribute
indicated most often. It is present in all three phases.
Usability also comes to the fore, although no issues
were found in the second phase. One thing that may
explain the relative prominence of these attributes is
that it is strongly user-oriented, as well as being an
office suite, which demands characteristics intrinsic to
its application domain. Therefore, it needs to provide
a significant number of functionalities, in ways meet
the (demanding) expectations of its users. In addition,
it must be easily approached by non-technical users
and have an attractive and modern graphical interface,
so that its use becomes intuitive.
5 CONCLUSION
This paper presented an exploratory study to investi-
gate the influence of target product quality attributes
in software release practices of OSS Projects. We
targeted on four research questions to search for ev-
idence that show the relationships among the target
attributes, the priorities assigned to the registered is-
sues and how they are delivered by product releases.
With this initiative we aim at understand how OSS
projects perform to align their goals with their users
needs.
In this way, it was possible to verify that this prior-
itization is strongly influenced by the profile and ob-
jective of the project, however it was not possible to
conclude if a certain quality attribute has priority in
the planning of releases of these projects.
5.1 Threats to Validity
In this study three limitations were founded. The first
can be assigned to the reduced number of users that
participate in the study. The results of the sample
may have been influenced because only seven users
participated. A tutorial with a test project was pre-
sented, with a view to reduce this risk, in the hope
of filling possible gaps that could occur in the data
taken from the public repositories. The second threat
was a possible misinterpretation of the requested ac-
tivity. In order to minimize this threat, the authors
were available to answer any doubts that may be nec-
essary during the execution of this activity. The last
threat concerns to the identification of product qual-
ity attributes and issues from Eclipse, Mozilla Fire-
fox and, Libre Office projects. To mitigate this risk,
all issues found were discussed to make more reli-
able quality attributes characterized for the selected
projects.
5.2 Work in Progress
As ongoing work, we are know replicating this study
with the support of machine learning techniques. The
goal is to collect and analyze a larger amount of data
to confirm the software quality attributes considered
as priority for each project.
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